Editing closed questions automatically puts questions in the reopen queue. But only upon the first edit.

People tend to edit such questions with minor and insignificant edits preventing the original poster to fix his question and eventually getting it reopened.

I know that OP should have posted the proper question in the first place. But if we do have feature that helps people to improve, then we should not inadvertently interfere with that feature.

I am thinking about adding a popup message when someone tries to edit a closed question (regardless of the person's reputation - even minor edits that have to go through Suggested Edits queue are sometimes approved) that would warn the editor that he/she should not edit the question if he/she cannot make significant edits that would make question on topic and reopenable.

The most recent example I have stumbled upon was question in Spanish where editor just retagged it. Completely useless.

This is a "don't put your poodle in the microwave oven" warning. The odds that it is going to tick-off the editor are high, everybody with 2K rep is expected to know the basic way that SO works. Edit review is enough to warn the occasional hapless no-rep SO user.
– Hans PassantNov 25 '17 at 14:46

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@HansPassant In question I have linked editor has enough reputation to skip edit review. I am also asking for such warning only for closed questions.
– Dalija PrasnikarNov 25 '17 at 14:50

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Minor note: this is for questions freshly closed, i.e. "on hold". And while I agree with the sentiment, it might be more helpful to ping these editors individually; I usually find that they are just unaware of the issues they might be causing. And see also a similar feature-request.
– Andras DeakNov 25 '17 at 17:03

@DonaldDuck I was pretty sure tag-only edits still put the post into the reopen queue. Oh look! Either Shog Of Old was wrong, or "body" edit refers to "non-title" edit. Wait, actually this doesn't prove anything; the edit deleted 2 characters from the body.
– Andras DeakNov 25 '17 at 18:11

@DonaldDuck thanks, that probably proves it, and I was misinformed :) Good to know indeed.
– Andras DeakNov 25 '17 at 18:16

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@DonaldDuck Thanks for the tip. There are so many rules it is hard to to track them all.
– Dalija PrasnikarNov 25 '17 at 18:18

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@AndrasDeak I found why the question that OP mentioned went trough the reopen queue. As you can see in the side by side markdown, the user who edited the tags also removed two newlines at the beginning of the question body. That was really useless.
– Donald DuckNov 25 '17 at 18:19

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@HansPassant I'm willing to bet the vast majority of 2K+ users have absolutely no idea that editing a closed post even sends it to the reopen queue, never mind under which circumstances it happens. But I can't argue with the fact that it might bug editors.
– DukelingNov 25 '17 at 21:03

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@HansPassant “everybody with 2K rep is expected to know the basic way” – There is no process that makes new users learn all this stuff. Most of the things aren’t even properly documented but hidden in some meta post which only addresses a small amount of users on SO. 2k reputation is really nothing. I would argue that even those that get access to moderation tools (20k!) still won’t know all the “basics” around SO processes.
– pokeNov 25 '17 at 23:51

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These comments are kinda ugh. The rep number was always designed to be a measure of what the user knows about the web site and how it works. If everybody wants to make a point that 2K rep isn't enough to trust somebody to edit a post without having to get reviewed then, simply, just ask for that limit to be raised. I personally don't think it has to be raised just because a few outlier SO users fumbled an edit once in a while. But that's just me, fallible me, I did post bad answers several times. It was never a problem. Odd that edits always need to be perfect. Takes just one click.
– Hans PassantNov 26 '17 at 0:02

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@HansPassant Reputation has some influence, but not as much as you would think. I don't think I was aware of some things before I crossed 10K. When people unlock new privileges, there is actually very little information presented about what they mean and how you should use them, unless you actually go and dig deeper on your own. And people rarely do.
– Dalija PrasnikarNov 26 '17 at 12:42

Perhaps the same "minor edit" filter that prevents notifications could be used to prevent the edited post entering the Reopen queue?
– Daniel FNov 27 '17 at 13:44

2 Answers
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Instead of a simple warning message, I suggest adding a checkbox asking if the user who is editing want their edit to put the post in the reopen queue. Something like this:

This would make it possible to make minor edits to closed questions without putting them in the reopen queue. Although in your specific example the question is completely worthless and trivial edits to that question are therefore useless, there are other examples where the question should remain closed but is actually useful.

This is especially true for duplicates, duplicates are worth keeping since they make it easier to search for the question, and therefore grammar edits to them would be useful, even though they should remain closed. For example (there are probably better examples, I found this one with a quick search), this question is clearly a duplicate, but it has a few issues that would be nice to correct (uncapitalized "i", "plz" instead of "please", "Modulus" isn't code, etc). The question has 17 upvotes and is worth keeping, the only issue with it is that it's a duplicate. It would be nice to edit this question without placing it in the reopen queue.

The checkbox would only be enabled when the current criteria for edits that put the question in the reopen queue are met. For example, this checkbox wouldn't exist on questions that have already been trough the reopen queue because of a previous edit. Also, since only body edits can place questions in the reopen queue, the checkbox can be disabled until the user edits the body (or alternatively it can show an error message when the user checks the checkbox without editing the body).

This checkbox can be checked by default if the user clicks on the edit link from the close banner (to make it more user-friendly for new users), and unchecked by default if the user clicks on the regular edit button (to avoid users carelessly leaving the checkbox checked when it shouldn't be).

Also, to address the issue about minor edits wasting the OP's chance to improve their question and get it reopened, the first edit with the checkbox checked will put the question in the reopen queue (instead of the first edit at all). For example, if someone makes a minor edit and doesn't check the checkbox and then someone else (probably the OP) fixes the critical issues and checks the checkbox, the second edit will put the question in the reopen queue (and of course the first one won't). Also, no edits will put the question in the reopen queue after the first edit with the checkbox checked.

I'd suggest a more "noob-friendly" wording - "This question is closed, meaning it was deemed to be inappropriate (?) based on the reasons provided below the post or in the comments and thus can't receive answers. [x] This is a major edit that addresses all the reasons it was closed."
– DukelingNov 25 '17 at 21:14

If the edit can't put the question in the reopen queue, I'd suggest a phrasing similar to what I suggested above, but instead of a check-box, we simply say something like "For more details on what this means and how to get this question reopened, see What is a "closed", “on hold”, or "duplicate" question?"
– DukelingNov 25 '17 at 21:18

@Dukeling I don't think that "closed for good" questions should have additional info when edited. This information belongs to the close banners, which already tell the asker to edit their question if that can help.
– Andras DeakNov 25 '17 at 21:24

This wouldn't really work if the closure happened between when the edit was started and when it was saved. We might still need a prompt message for that case.
– DukelingNov 25 '17 at 21:40

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I think this would need some A/B testing to see whether new users would actually bother reading or interacting with that. If they often don't, it might be better to either force them to select one of two options instead or forget about this feature.
– DukelingNov 25 '17 at 21:45

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@Dukeling let's face it: the vast majority if closed questions are hopeless, and no editing will make them eligible for reopening. I'd say that a default of not pushing the question into the reopen queue should be fine.
– Andras DeakNov 25 '17 at 21:53

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“This question was put on hold. If all issues pointed out below are addressed after this edit and you believe the question is ready to be reviewed for being reopened, activate this checkbox.”
– pokeNov 25 '17 at 23:56

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This would be abused immediately. Right now, people post crummy questions that get put on hold, but don't necessarily get deleted quickly, and don't necessarily get edited, so they just kind of languish. Any mechanism that allows a user to edit without bumping it into a review queue will be used to sneak in spam, guaranteed.
– Ed Cottrell♦Nov 26 '17 at 19:44

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@EdCottrell My first response to this proposal was "Great, I like this better than warning message" Unfortunately, your point about possible abuse stands and in that regard warning message seems like better option.
– Dalija PrasnikarNov 27 '17 at 11:07

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@EdCottrell Editing still bumps the post to the front page though, right? So outright spam should still be seen by enough people that it gets taken care of.
– Ajedi32Nov 27 '17 at 18:42

@Ajedi32 Yes, if the system sees the edit as significant. And in theory that’s enough. In practice, obvious spam would still probably get caught, but sneakier spammers would make trivial edits or hidden edits to try to fly under the radar. Most spammers are either lazy or bots, but we see an increasing number of sophisticated spammers and even SO-specific bots. If there’s a way to exploit a situation, even some of the time, I’d expect spammers to jump on it.
– Ed Cottrell♦Nov 27 '17 at 18:49

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@EdCottrell I don't see why closed questions are any different from open questions in that regard. Or are you suggesting that edits on open questions should put the question into a queue as well?
– Ajedi32Nov 27 '17 at 19:36

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@Ajedi32 Well, edits by users with < 2k rep always go into the pending edits review queue under the current system. The proposal is to allow bypassing the reopen review queue, regardless of the editor's rep. This would mean, for example, that a 4k user could decide to spam a product by editing text or links into closed posts. Believe it or not, that kind of thing happens now; it's just easy to detect. But closed questions attract far fewer eyes than open ones, so this proposal would make detection even harder. I prefer a warning, rather than an option to avoid (any of) the review queues.
– Ed Cottrell♦Nov 27 '17 at 19:46

I posted some numbers on this a while back, so it's probably a good idea to review them. Most important observation there is that owner edits are responsible for both the majority of questions added to the reopen queue and the majority of questions reopened via the reopen queue.

...and also the majority of questions not reopened via the reopen queue.

This shouldn't be too surprising; the UI heavily encourages authors to edit their questions after they are closed, and the author arguably has the most motivation to get a question reopened. The author also wrote the original though, so has already demonstrated some deficiencies in the knowledge and experience necessary to fix the problems.

For those reasons, I don't think that a pop-up or checkbox would be particularly successful here; there's a very good chance the author is already trying to reopen their question, but clueless as to how to do so effectively. There's also a decent chance they won't read anything we throw in their path.

But for the few who are willing to read, putting some critical advice somewhere accessible while actually editing might be worthwhile. Currently, the sidebar of the edit page contains only generic editing instructions; there's no advice on how to structure a good question. Perhaps we could improve that?

Figure months to get any changes in the current climate. But with that in mind, copy changes - even changes that are conditional - are much less work than anything that touches review.
– Shog9♦Nov 28 '17 at 20:02

Adding more information on how to make good edit would be welcomed.
– Dalija PrasnikarDec 3 '17 at 9:56

What bothers (that is maybe too strong word) me with the numbers you posted is that we don't have a clue about how many questions were left to be closed in the reopen queue because someone fixed minor mistakes, and when OP really edited question properly question never made it to the reopen queue.
– Dalija PrasnikarDec 3 '17 at 9:58

Having said that questions that start badly are rarely put in the good shape, so probably trying to fix this workflow is exercise in futility and focus should be put into a real problem - preventing and minimizing bad questions being posted in the first place.
– Dalija PrasnikarDec 3 '17 at 10:01

The entire point of the automated triggers was to give some exposure to questions that stood at least a slim chance of being fixed, @DalijaPrasnikar; prior to their introduction, very, very few questions ever got reopened. That most questions shouldn't be reopened isn't surprising - indeed, it'd be a massive waste of the work put in by folks closing if they did. But making the option available and effective is still largely a positive thing.
– Shog9♦Dec 4 '17 at 22:24